Name: India, China and the U.S. battle for supremacy in the new space age
Uploaded: 2025-10-21T18:28:52.000Z
Duration: 38 min 38 s
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Welcome to beyond the Valley, a CNBC tech podcast with Arjun Karpil and Tom Chitty.

The World Economic Forum released a report earlier this year which estimated that the global space economy will treble to $1.8 trillion by 2035.

Sentences with advanced comparative

Not only will it rival the size and reach of the semiconductor industry, the but space technologies will become as widespread as microchips are today.

And so the 21st century space race has taken off, led in large part by private companies.

But as we'll find out, the major superpowers have space ambitions of their own beyond the Valley.

So for this week's episode, we're going to start things off a little differently.

before we get to them, Arjun wants to do a little scene setter for you, if you.

I just want to set the scene because, you know, space has been this sort of area that governments have been aiming to take a lead on for many, many decades at this point and dominate.

as we know, has been a very prominent space power for a very long time.

But we're now getting into an era where we're seeing China flex its muscles in space in India as well, which we'll obviously talk about.

But as I tell a little bit very small story to set the scene.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, which sparked this space race between it and the U.S.

china, however, was nowhere ready to be seen.

While the US and the Soviet Union were battling for superiority in this new domain, Mao Zedong, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, reportedly said at the time, china cannot even put a potato in in space.

Since Mao's comments, China has launched satellites, sent humans to space, and

China has its own rival to America's GPS called Beidou.

A Chinese spacecraft has also landed on the far side of the moon to collect samples.

And China wants to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033.

So, you know, a lot of things have changed now.

Perhaps at one point it was the Soviet Union as one of the big space powers.

that' all going to, I think, set the scene for the discussion we're about to have.

Let's then introduce our special guest for this episode.

Professor Chris Newman is Professor of Space Law and Policy at Northumbria University Law School.

He is actively engaged in research in the emerging field of space law and has been recognized as a National expert on UK and European space law and policy.

Chris, thank you for joining beyond the Valley.

Chris, just wanted to first ask you, have you always been a space nut?

I, you know, there's no way of hiding it, there's no way of wrapping it up.

I'd love to tell you that I'm some sort of analytical, you know, expert in it.

What you're talking to is an 8 year old boy who got lucky.

I've loved the great power element behind it.

And increasingly, as my legal career developed, I started applying those questions that, you know, lawyers apply to everyday activities.

I started thinking about this in terms of space and what I found was actually there was this great body of work that's already been going on.

You know, there's some real great lawyers who've asked themselves questions about what is law going to be like going forward.

And I think it's really interesting that we're now in a time and I think you're exactly right.

Space law is in a position where I think cyber law was about 20 years ago.

I think we're really starting to see it get operationalized and come to life.

And you were mentioning before we went to, went to press record that you wanted to probably be an astronaut maybe at one point, but

the maths, your maths wasn't quite up to scratch.

Is that I should say I've never wanted to be an astronaut.

You need to develop a whole new lifting technology to get me into orbit.

But I have always wanted to be part of the space program.

Reading books about life in mission control.

it's by one of the, one of the flight controllers and talks about the evolution of flight control.

It's by Eugene Krantz, the flight controller from Apollo 13.

I'm too scared to even go up the elevator up to the Apollo rocket.

Well, Chris, we were going to get into the cultural stuff at the end of the episode, but

I like that you've already put in a little book recommendation early on.

Let's get into the game show part of the podcast and we'll play stat of the week.

I know, Chris, you know, stat of the week.

So you gave a nice stat yourself at the start, which was good, but

Like to make a note, Chris, but just to remind myself, but

you don't, I mean, you may remember that better than me.

Before you give us some background, Chris, on what we're talking about today, explain this.

Can we say almost obsession with space, I mean, a place most of us will never visit and from down here on Earth seems to have very little bearing on our lives.

I think there's a number of dimensions to this.

I think the modernity of it is, is one of the things.

Fact is it really speaks to human progress.

The Moon, for example, has played such a large part in humanity's stories going, you know, going back 20, 30,000 years.

People have looked up at the moon, people have worshiped the moon, people have fallen in love under the moon.

People have used the moon for, for all sorts of things.

So it's, it's, it's an actual, it's a real symbol of sort of attaining these, these things that, that humans once thought were mythical and are now very practical and rudimentary elements of our lives.

So I think there's the modernity aspect of it.

I think there's a, for me personally, there's a sense of wonder about it all.

There's a sense of seeing, you know, the seeing us in our, in our true place within the universe.

I think there's something really magical and that really appeals to me about that.

And I also think there's something about the tech side of things, the actual getting there.

So I think you've got these three areas which all combined to make perfect stories and it's stories that people want to hear.

So I think you've got, you know, you look at the Apollo story, you look at the story of Yuri Gagarin, you look at the development of the space station, all of these are stories that add these elements of modernity, these elements of technology, these elements of magic and mythology.

And so it's really easy to fall in love with space, or at least it's been really easy for me to find, fall in love with space.

And in terms of, you mentioned the tech, what about the science as well?

Because many people go, there's all these massive, very expensive missions to space.

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